


Order of the Day

by staranise



Category: Flashpoint
Genre: Gen, Training
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-19
Updated: 2010-12-19
Packaged: 2017-10-13 19:27:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,546
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/140843
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/staranise/pseuds/staranise
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The SRU participates in a crowd control simulation.  Sometimes, the best win is a loss.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Order of the Day

**Author's Note:**

  * For [helens78](https://archiveofourown.org/users/helens78/gifts).



The morning's pretty beautiful, and not just because Jules is going to kick some ass today.  She did her morning run through the beautiful misty-cool streets of an early summer day at dawn, never once feeling winded.  She loves the feeling she's got these days, that her body's back to normal; only the faint patches of scar tissue, front and back, show that Tomasic hit her all.  It's gonna be a gorgeous day, she can tell; the warmth is already creeping in with the sun and this afternoon it'll spiral up into outright heat.  Low 16, high 25; yesterday made it to 26, and it's only just May now.

People are already standing around in the parking lot outside the urban training ground when she pulls up.  Team One's the only SRU force they brought in today, so they're mixed in with volunteers who are milling around by the fence.  The gates are locked, since today is not the SRU's show; they'll have to wait to be let in.  The riot squad is already inside, and got in two hours before anyone else for their pre-scenario briefing.

She can see Spike's Moto Guzzi at the end of a row of cars, but it isn't until she's out of her Jeep that he sees them trying to chat up a woman in the crowd of volunteers.  She heads over to where she can see Ed and Wordy nursing coffees.  Wordy, bless his heart, bought enough for everyone, and detaches a double-double from the drink tray when she saunters up.  Lew's stretched out on the grass next to Wordy's minivan, his ballcap settled loosely over his face to block out the morning light.

"What'd you _do_ last night, Lew?" she laughs.  He just waves an arm at her.

Ed grins.  "Wouldn't we all like to know."

Wordy reaches for another coffee when Sam finishes locking up his bike and heads over, which causes Ed to crane his head to get a good look at the top of his cup.  "Oh, no," he says, making a reach for it, which Wordy evades.  "Wordy, that is a crime against coffee.  Get that boy an iced capp, because you are aiding and abetting _heresy_."

"Jules," Wordy says a little desperately, and hands her off the cup before Ed can get his hands on it.

Sam's got an eyebrow cocked as he approaches, and takes the cup from Jules a little hesitantly.  "There a problem?"

"Wordy got you a cup of cream and sugar with some coffee mixed in."  She grins.  "Ed's just being a purist."

He grins, looking down at the 4x4 written on his lid, and peels back the tab before toasting his benefactor with the cup.  "Thank you, Wordy."

Jules has been awake and alert since six and a double-double _still_ smells and tastes like heaven.  She's pretty sure Tim's is laced with crack.

"So," Ed says, once the thought of Sam's drowned coffee stops making him want to gag and Spike's come over.  "So far as the riot squad's concerned, everyone else here is just a bunch of regular Joes, damn upset about something.  But there's a catch.  Boss is gonna observe, but us six are people of _interest_.  In this scenario, we are known to the police as professional purveyors of violence.  And remember, they _are_ authorized to use less-lethal tactics during this simulation.  As are we."

"So they're gonna know our faces?"  Jules frowns.  "Warrants on any of us?"

"None.  They can't touch us until we give them provocation."

"I _love_ giving provocation," Lew contributes from the grass.

"Yeah," Spike mutters, "I bet you do."

"What I got for you here are pagers."  Ed produces them from his jacket pockets, fumbling through the group.  "Number two—Wordy.  Four, Lew."  The pager lands on Lew's chest.  "Spike, Sam, here you go, and three is Jules.  These are on vibrate, so keep 'em somewhere you can feel them." 

Spike begins to stuff his pager down his pants until he catches Jules's raised-eyebrows look and thinks better of it.  Wordy gives Lew a hand off the grass, and Ed checks his watch.  "We've got enough time to finish our coffee, then it's go-time.  Every page is going to be individual, so remember your order of events, and don't worry about what everyone else is doing.  We're going for chaos and confusion here."

"Yes," Lew hisses triumphantly.  "This is gonna be _awesome._ "

*

 **09:32: CROWDS BEGIN TO FORM ALONG 1 ST AVE.  BICYCLE UNITS DISPATCHED TO MONITOR.**

 

Jules leans back against one of the lightposts on the sidewalk while they mill around in a crowd.  Right now people are still walking freely across the street and between crowds on two different blocks, since busy streets downtown usually aren't tidy and simple either.  Ed's tapping his foot next to her, watching Lew and Wordy across the street.  "Soph's visiting her family in Montreal," he continues.  "I'd go, but she wanted me to save my days off to head up to the cabin as soon as Clark gets off school.  Still, I think I can put up with my own cooking for a bit."  He grins to himself.  "Ran into an old buddy a while ago.  We had a band together when we were in university, but he got married, I joined the force... with Sophs gone, we could do a little jamming.  Actually got Clark to join in for a bit."

"Let me guess, he's asking for an electric cello for his birthday?"

"Nah, he wasn't too into it.  But he tried.  It was cool."  Ed looks away again, still smiling at the thought.

She touches her beeper, just to make sure she hasn't missed it, but the bicycle patrols are still wheeling lazily down the street.  "Was talking to Sam about this scenario earlier," she says, leaning back.  Ed looks down at her.

"Yeah?  I thought he'd like it.  Clean and simple."

"Well, he's used to crowd-control tactics in Afghanistan.  A little different, but he hasn't done much of this before.  But he said they used to play capture-the-flag, in his old unit, with helicopters."

"Now _that_ would make things interesting."

"What would make things interesting?"

They both turn at the voice between them, though Ed responds faster than Jules does.  Donna Sabine's behind them, in running pants and a jean jacket, her hair pulled back in a ponytail.  "Donna, what're you doing here?  They decide to pull in another team after all?"

"Nah."  She shakes her head, her eyes creasing in a smile.  "I've got the day off.  I'm here as a civilian volunteer."

"Oh, that is just _evil._ "  Ed seems thoroughly delighted.  "Anyway, _interesting_ is Braddock's old unit playing wargames with helicopters.  What do you think, eh?  Let's put it in for next year's budget."

Donna's face quietly lights with a kind of glee, the tension around her eyes relaxing as she looks up at Ed.  In a weird way it's good that Donna still gets along with the team, partly because Jules doesn't like the thought of some sort of competition with someone she doesn't know well.  She and Donna usually work different shifts, and sometimes see each other enough coming or going to say hi in the locker room.  The last time she ran into Donna outside of work had been during registration at last month's triathlon, where they'd got talking about their races, but that was it.  "Only if I get to drive."

Jules snorts a bit at Ed.  "You want tanks, too?"

"Nah," he scoffs.  "They'd get caught up at rush hour."

"Hard to get those suckers on the shoulder," Donna agrees.

"Hey, we're going out for lunch after this, you wanna come?"

Jules's beeper goes.  _Finally._

 

 **09:58: 4 th ST 1ST AVE:  CROWD BECOMES HOSTILE.**

 

"'Scuse me," she says, unslinging her backpack from one shoulder.  She smiles at Donna.  "Great talking to you."  Both of them are looking at her a little suspiciously, when her fingers make contact with a tennis ball.  She slips her backpack back on, waiting for the bicycle cops to get just pass them; Ed and Donna stand back a little out of habit, as she lines up and solidly connects her tennis ball with a patroller's head.

"Ha!" Ed breathes, happy and triumphant.  "'Bout time."

Jules steps back into the crowd, which is momentarily shocked, and begins sidling away from the scene of the crime.

 

 **10:04: 4 TH ST 1ST AVE: CONTAINMENT MEASURES IMPLEMENTED.**

 

It's kind of mean to be pissed that the riot squad can actually do its job, but she was genuinely hoping that she'd be able to escape the shield wall and work from outside it.  Lew manages it, though, and as he walks off he shoots Jules a look that's jubilant and mocking.

She sticks her tongue out, as the crowd she's caught up in gets pushed behind crowd-control barriers, and she disappears in a swell of people taller than her.  She waits until she's close to the middle of the crowd before opening her backpack again, pulling out a hair elastic and ballcap, then shucking her thin jacket.  She stops for another quick drink of water before closing the bag up again.

Up at the front, Ed seems to have taken the 'desensitization' tactic to heart.  He's toe-to-toe with a twitchy kid in the shield wall, and even without screaming his deep voice can just boom like nothing else.  "I look _dangerous_ to you, kid?  I look like a _threat?_   Am I doing anything illegal?"  And the kid, well, he hasn't learned yet not to let his body language give himself away because he keeps resettling his feet, shifting his baton, meeting Ed's eyes in a way that means he's not paying attention to the rest of the crowd.  "What'cha gonna do?  Beat me up, _pig?_ "

"Sir," kid says, still kind of uncertain.  "Sir, I am asking you to back up."

"I'm a legal citizen!"  Ed steps up just a little closer.  "You got a _problem_ with my _right_ to peaceful assembly?"

Her pager goes off.  She's got her hand in her bag when Lew lands his hand-launched flashbang at the riot squad's heels and Ed grabs the kid's shield, and shoves.

Ed's leading the charge over the kid's body when they take him down, and Donna's leaping on the officer who's trying to wrestle him to the ground.  The shield wall's trying to re-form, and the crowd's almost got one of the barriers down.  Lew is hauling ass down the street.  The officers at her back mean she can't weasel out, and if only they can get Ed and Donna out of the way, the squad can back them all up into the alley pretty safely.  Jules can hear, more than see, the ruckus Sam and Spike are starting two blocks down.

And Jules?  Jules has other plans.

 _This is why you know my name,_ she thinks, a little gleeful, and eases back into the alley when everyone else is focusing on forward momentum.  A short run-up means she can jump from a foothold on the side of a dumpster to its lid, and sling herself over the fence.  They probably didn't even see her go.

Lew's already waiting for her, taking the bag from her back to divvy up the last two of their flash grenades.  The two of them soft-foot over to the corner, where Lew clears her to cross; they dump the rest of their bag in a pre-arranged spot behind a set of garbage cans, and start creeping up the alley to the second mob.

She loves getting the fun jobs in simulations.

 

 **10:37:  3 RD ST 1ST AVE: SUSPECTS APREHENDED, CARRYING RESTRICTED WEAPONS**.

 

Lew's got his arm back to throw at the shield wall's briefly-exposed flank when one of the bicycle officers behind them looks left and gets a good look.  She drops her bike and pulls her gun, shouting for backup, and Jules feels her loyalty to the cause of mayhem diminishing rapidly, because when she's got her sights on Lew, Jules is turning tail and getting the hell out of there.  She has to dodge back down the alley she came up and tries to think out an escape route on her feet, but luck is against her—the bicycle cop's friend pursued her down the alley, and is about to do a pincer with one of the officers freed by the successful containment of Ed's mob.

And both of them have longer legs than Jules.

She does not, to reiterate, love it when the other guys can do their jobs.  Because really, Jules, off all the apprehension techniques in the book to get taken down by, _tackled from behind_ is a particularly inglorious one.

They put her in the prisoner transport van right after Ed and Donna, both of whom are temporarily blinded by the pepper spray.

 

 **11:34: INCIDENT CONTAINED.  11 ARRESTS EN ROUTE TO STATION.**

*

"It's not like we _wanted_ to win," Ed consoles himself, into his drink.  A mournful air hangs over the table, given how thoroughly they got their asses kicked; some of the SRU didn't even bother to come to the lunch after.  Boss disappeared into Public Safety's debriefing, Wordy went to pick his kids up from soccer, and Spike and Lew slunk off without even offering an excuse.   "They gotta do their jobs, right?  Wouldn't be good if we could overrun them."

"This was _not_ the part of my training I wanted to relive," Donna grumps.  She's still wiping her face with the little handwipes that don't actually do anything about capsicum.  "Fuck me."

"Not even—" Sam starts.  He picks up a mozza stick and then mashes it against his plate in discontent.  "It's a stupid way to try to achieve an objective.  I mean, that'd never work with someone determined to do _actual_ damage.  There wasn't even an objective.  Someone who really wanted to destroy something public wouldn't even bother with raising a crowd first.  In that case, you'd want the crowd out of there."

Jules tilts her head towards him.  "Yeah, Sam, but in that situation, they don't call crowd control, they call _us_.  Different scenario."

He makes a disgusted noise.  "I guess."

"Tell you what, Sam," Ed says, his voice bright and friendly.  "I'll let _you_ design the November terrorist scenario."  When Sam extends his disgruntlement to his face, Ed leans in with his eyes dancing.  "Because in the event of the real thing, if the rest of us aren't trained?  _You_ get stuck in the truck, or sent to be our liason officer with the military."

"Truck's not bad." Jules puts in, which doesn't reassure Sam.

"When you do the terrorist simulation, do the rest of us get to join in?" Donna asks them, looking interested despite herself.

"I will detail Sam to you _myself_ to play Dungeon Master," Ed promises her solemnly.

"You know the way to a girl's heart," Donna says, with a smile.  "Minions."

"Even better," Jules muses, stirring her drink with her straw, "get volunteers from Public Safety to come in and play terrorists."

Everyone's faces light up at that, and Ed raises his water glass with careful ceremony.  "Amen, Constable," he says.  "Amen."


End file.
